Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Tipster Sally fills us in on last night's very successful CB3 meeting where NYU and the East Village community gathered to discuss the fate of Met Foods. She writes:

"NYU has met their match. The room was packed with the community--young, old, in between. A young, fashionable NYU student who shops at Met Foods came to say she was outraged at NYU, the school she'd dreamed about going to since she was a child. People, many NYU graduates over the years, spoke eloquently and intelligently about what NYU is doing to the neighborhood. NYU is a not-for-profit organization that took in the neighborhood of 1.6 billion dollars last year tax-free!

Over 2500 signatures were gathered on a petition, and 300 more on an online petition in less than 2 weeks, and NYU was told if they don't work with Michael (Met Foods manager) and his brother, we'll get 10,000 more. NYU was told by the audience that they need to be 'punished' and investigated. People called for the withdrawal of their not-for-profit-status. We asked as a community that the lease should be renewed for a long time--Michael wants his son to eventually be able to run the store--with no rent hike, that it should be a give-back to the community for all the damage they've done.

The community-relations person that was sent from NYU stated at the beginning of the meeting that Michael was not working with them, etc., etc. (the Villager article reported on what she said), and she started with this again. By the end of the meeting she was saying that a deal would be worked out with Met Foods."

Let's keep our fingers crossed that the people win this battle in the ongoing war against our neighborhood. You can sign the online petition or go to Met Foods and sign in person.

8 comments:

Read the 4/21 issue of NY Magazine & NYU's Abu Dhabi campus. Will NYU become a tax free conduit for Arab petrodollars? Universities are for academia not real estate. Congress should investigate NYU immediately or their alma mater will be "We'll take Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island".....

...is another analysis that might be worth checking out. Revoking non-profit status? eh, doesn't seem to make that much sense to me. that would make NYU a full fledged corporation that the community would have less power over.

Holding NYU to the standards of accountability of a public school - that makes much more sense to me.

I used to shop at that Met for a couple years. It's just a chain supermarket, and not an especially wonderful one at that. Very, very tight aisles, as I recall. Regardless, people need supermarkets, and stability is good for neighborhoods. It's absurd for NYU to try maximizing profit on that space, especially as a non-profit entity, especially as a landmark community institution which should be invested in the continued health of the neighborhood.

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